PRIDE

For the first time since moving North I had my first hospitalization for suicidality. It largely consisted of me sitting in a room waiting for a bed and/or a doctor, but it was necessary. Sometimes I’m just not okay. I don’t know if there’s a correlation or a causation from coming out as trans, but I don’t think so.

I’ve felt more alive since coming out than I really have for the last twenty years. I’m grateful for my brothers and sisters who’ve helped normalize such things. This seems an important thing to acknowledge during PRIDE month.

It’s not just yours and my strength in seeing and acknowledging members of the LGBTQIA community it’s that of the LGBTQIA community going back generations. Without Stonewall, James Obergefell, Hillary and Julie Goodridge and all the other men, women, and others who’ve normalized not being a CIS heterosexual.

This isn’t to say we in the LGBTQIA community don’t still suffer hate and discrimination. It happens far too often to this day. There are still battles to be fought and hopefully won. But. We’re further than we were twenty years ago. This helps me have hope that someday me being a trans male won’t matter. It’s me hoping my friends who have married someone of the same gender don’t have to weigh out hate when deciding if and where to move.

Too frequently the world is an oyster unless you’re the victim of some sort of ism. Let’s cut down on the -isms. As TSA says at airports, “If you see something say something.” We can’t let bigots just get away with their hate any longer.